Astrea (NASDAQ:ASAX) sent out the sort of reminder today that it likely would not have thought necessary – that it is a different company from space venture Astra (NASDAQ:ASTR), which itself de-SPAC’d in July. Astra was the combination company of Holicity, Inc.
Astra (the space company) suffered a -26% drop in Thursday trading after one of its rockets failed to deploy its payload of satellites following launch and is down a further -5% in the premarket. Similarly-named Astrea, which intends to combine with HotelPlanner and Reservations.com, also took a -16.6% hit yesterday and wanted to make sure investors knew what they were dumping.
While the thought of investors panic-selling the wrong company based on an event is amusing, it is also possible that some of Astrea’s volume is due to the fact that its shareholders went “ex-redemption” yesterday, since it had until today to make their redemption decisions ahead of a completion vote on Tuesday. Astra is set to complete its combination with HotelPlanner and Reservations.com following this special meeting on February 15.
Whatever the cause of Astrea’s sudden downturn, the clarification likely cannot hurt. If these shares were sold in error it makes for a really unfortunate timing of events in an already difficult SPAC environment.
Astrea originally announced its $567 million deal with HotelPlanner and Reservations.com on August 10. West Palm Beach, Florida-based HotelPlanner provides an online hotel-booking platform and counts event-booker Meetings.com among its portfolio. Reservations.com booked over 1 million hotel stays on its site in 2019.
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